


breath catches

by joeri



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Injury Recovery, Kissing, M/M, Near Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-27
Updated: 2019-08-27
Packaged: 2020-09-27 15:37:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20410171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joeri/pseuds/joeri
Summary: felix wishes he would take care of himself, even once.





	breath catches

Much like Sylvain’s collar and how it caught the edge of an axe by the white of his bones, Felix’s breath catches sharp, on something _dangerously_ warm in his throat when he finds the door to the infirmary locked. His panic gives way to banging until Manuela herself is at the door with a face more irked than grave.

“Is there a _need_ for all th—”

“_Move!_” Felix demands, halfway knocking the poor woman, the hard working nurse down on her ass as he scrambles to find the bed hidden behind a set of pale blue curtains, and the man bed ridden there.

Alive, no less. Alive, all the same.

“Hey! Have some respect for your professors! How am I supposed to attend to him like this?!”

Manuela’s cries fall on deaf ears. Try as she might to get Felix’s attention, he’s busy pressing his now ungloved fingers to Sylvain’s throat. He needs to know for himself. He needs to feel his blood flow. He needs to feel that _thrumming_ beneath his fingertips to know he’s there, that _thump_, _thump_, _thump_ing that teaches him that their promise hasn’t been broken yet.

And gives Felix free reign to rake his palm across his face.

“Ough! _Ow_! What the—”

“Idiot,” he spits. “What the hell was that out there?”

“Wait a minute, Felix,” says Manuela, rushing to the bedside. “He’s injured! You can beat him up when he’s not in danger of opening up and gushing all over.”

“He’s lucky I don’t wet my blade with him right here and now.”

There’s a watery laugh and then Sylvain’s waving a stiff hand Manuela’s way. The armor once covering up his chest and shoulders have collapsed to the wayside. The discarded shrapnel lay circling the bed as though in the time between he’d started to molt his metallic exoskeleton. Sylvain’s shirt has been torn open, giving way to the sticky red bandages adorning his chest. They hide the messy red problem underneath.

Sylvain looks prone in a way Felix finds frightening.

“It’s alright, Manuela,” he breathes, the rasp in his voice something to frown at. “He’s right to come in here like that. I imagine I gave him quite a scare.”

To that, Felix says nothing—nothing at least until Sylvain manufactures a wink, thinking there’s no blood in his teeth when he smiles and says, “though, I’m honored to see Felix all torn up about me, warms my heart.”

Felix rears back a fist he doesn’t intend to stick, his other hand fixing itself to Sylvain’s shoulder within seconds. “You think this is cute?” And Sylvain winces. And Felix does too, and his fists loosen by impulse and not choice it seems.

Manuela’s hand rests thin upon Felix’s shoulder blade. He tries not to crumble under the touch, crumble all over Sylvain. His face looks pinched in the middle as though he’s tasted something sour, or as though he’s clinging onto something like a rope and it’s burning his hands as it rips through them.

“Let him talk to me for a bit, please.”

Sylvain talks in a meeker voice and Felix can’t contend with it. Neither can Manuela, or so Felix thinks by the way that she distances herself, like she doesn’t altogether trust that Felix won’t mangle him but trusts in Sylvain’s trust in him. There’s something of an insult in that but Felix can’t be bothered.

“Ugh,” Manuela sighs. “How it is to be theatrical and young. Just be nice to each other.” The exasperation in her tone can’t be missed but Felix is glad when she steps out, thankful even, that Sylvain is the only man in the infirmary on this night.

The only one who fucked up this bad.

And Felix’s tenor turns muted, the anger leaving his throat when he all but mouths, “how bad is it?”

“I’m alive aren’t I?” Felix can’t stop a punch from landing in Sylvain’s healthy, capable arm. “Ow! H-hey! That’s not an excuse to batter me.”

“You clearly don’t value your body, why should I?”

Wincing and pressing his hand to the spot, not the gaping stitched-over hole in his chest but the small bruise forming in his arm, Sylvain’s smile comes unexpectedly easy.

“You’re _really_ upset, huh?”

Felix takes notice to Sylvain’s eyes traveling the room, scanning Felix for something and then spotting his glove thrown into the corner. Felix thinks that perhaps Sylvain can already tell why that is. He’s smarter than most people think. Felix thinks that even since they were young, Sylvain prides himself on seeming vapid and uninvolved. He doesn’t mind being underestimated. If Felix weren’t mistaken, Sylvain gets by on that.

Sylvain takes Felix’s fingers in his. “Sorry.”

“What did you think I would feel if you had died? Held onto your memory? Lifted you up as some brave knight who died for his country?”

“Yes?” Sylvain grimaces.

“No. I’d remember you as an idiot.”

“Oh, gotcha,” Sylvain says bitterly.

“A fool who thought he could find meaning in life by throwing it away. This whole business with knighthood is a farce. Do you think I could handle them saying of you the same shit they say about Glenn? About how he fulfilled his duty and died an honorable knight?”

Silence permeates the room. Sylvain drinks it in between full courses of Felix’s breath in his face speaking of death and regret.

“You keep yourself alive, you hear me? I’m not ready to die yet. Until I am, you do whatever it takes to live. I don’t care what you need to do to do it.”

His voice shakes. Sylvain squeezes Felix’s fingers tighter and all it does is make his voice come out more.

“War isn’t about dying for your country. War isn’t about honor. War is ugly and it’s about murder, and it’s about making the other man die for his.” Felix has both of Sylvain’s hands in his, the fleshy one sweating and slipping across his palm. His head hangs low. He can’t look him in the eye. All he can think about is the blood dried against the flat of Sylvain’s stomach.

Felix holds onto his anger because he can’t fathom what could possibly come after this.

“You—”

“Hey, Felix,” Sylvain interrupts easily enough, speech like cotton, so much so that Felix almost questions if he’s heard a single word that he’s said.

Craning his head back up to lock eyes with the other man, Sylvain pulls Felix to him. Each of Felix’s hands do a compulsory reposition to the bed, to stop him from hurting Sylvain in whatever move he’s trying to do, and Sylvain grunts a little in the process, because it _is_ hurting him to maneuver this way, but their lips touch nonetheless.

Sylvain kisses Felix quiet, smoothing his own chapped lips against Felix’s velvety own. Before he can apologize for the rough texture, Felix is licking them wet and like they’ve done since they were children, they lick each others wounds and figure out how to heal each other.

Their mouths part with a pop.

“I’ll be better,” Sylvain says.

“Shut up,” Felix says, kissing him deeply until they both can’t breathe anymore. “I just… love you, a lot.”

“I know you do.”

In between the nudging of their noses and the bumping of their teeth and tongue, Felix’s found himself atop the bed making cozy in Sylvain’s lap. Once they pull apart once more, his eyelids sit half-mast, witnessing Sylvain smile coyly, warm and something light.

“I want to love you just as much.”

“You can start by not doing shit like this,” Felix says with less bite than he’d like.

“You’ll teach me how?”

Sylvain winks.

“Not worth it. You don’t listen or pay attention. You’d be a drain to teach.”

“Aw, but at least I’m great to look at,” Sylvain coos.

Felix flicks the center of his forehead. “You won’t be if your head gets cut off.”

Sylvain snickers, “I liked you better when you were kissing me. Can we go back to that?”

“Manuela will be back.”

“She isn’t in here _now_.”

“For fuck’s sake, Sylvain…”


End file.
